Daisy and Me

By Josi

I get asked a lot if my life is like that of my characters. For the most part, it isn’t, and that applies to Daisy. I did not get pregnant as a teenager, I have never been divorced, I’m not a snazzy dresser who gets my hair done regularly, I don’t have a career like she does, I didn’t take my kids to daycare, I’m not catholic, I have not left the faith of my youth, I have a good relationship with my parents, and I will not have any ‘surprise’ children—a hysterectomy guaranteed that. For the most part, Daisy and I are very different women. But there are some similarities.
I am blonde, I like to keep my hair long, I drive a red Prius, I have daughters, I am ambitious, and I have had my struggles with my role as a mother. I might go into more detail on that in another post, but in a nutshell I thought I would “enjoy” motherhood more than I do. I feel all squirmy inside to say that, because I don’t want it to reflect negatively on my children or call in to question whether I’m happy with my choices in regard to motherhood—my kids are great and I wouldn’t change my role for anything in the world. But motherhood is waaaaay harder than I expected to be, and not nearly as fun as I had hoped it would be. Daisy feels the same way, and though her journey as a mother has had much more angst and complexity than mine has, as I wrote her feelings about waiting for her role to be done, they were reflective of the same things I have felt at times over the last 20 years.
In the story, Daisy experiences a change and though hers is more forced than mine, I’ve experienced some similarities. For many years I have counted down for my kids to start leaving home. I once saw a sign that said “Dear kids, check out is at 18” and I wanted one of my own. I anticipated all this freedom and less things to worry about all my insecurities associated with my role as mother would go away. About five years ago my husband said “Do you realize that we only have 5 Christmases with Breanna at home.” We were lying in bed and I think my heart stopped for a second. It was the first of many times since that I felt this panic of “The end.” And my feelings toward motherhood shifted a little bit. It shifted some more when I ended up making some connections to my own withdrawal at times from my family—therapy can be a very eye-opening experience. For the last two years I’ve felt the time my daughter leaves creeping up on me and I have found myself wishing I could have a do-over. I’ve wondered how much I missed because I didn’t love it and was counting down for it to be over with. I’m not one to swim in regrets, my journey is my journey and I have learned much through my time at the University of Mom. But writing Daisy was a very personal journey for me. It’s a story of a woman who has worked hard and done everything she needed to do without looking back, without questioning herself, and then she gets thrown into the biggest question of all—can I be better than I’ve been?
Though my trials aren’t the same as Daisy’s, I know that everyone has those pinnacle moments of life when they find themselves reevaluating, questioning, wondering at what’s happened and where it might take them. They can be scary moments. Sometimes the answers are right there waiting for us, but more often than not we have to make changes and compromises and dig deep to get through those things. Sometimes we end up in a completely different place than we started at.
It’s my hope that Daisy’s story will reflect that process that all of us go through. It’s my hope that watching the other members of the book club help her and lift her up will reflect the need we all have for friends when we face our own demons. It’s my hope that even if you don’t agree with who Daisy is or what she chooses to do with her future, you will understand her and learn something from her. She taught me a whole lot.
My daughter started college in June, living on campus an hour from home. It’s been far harder than I expected it to be but I am attempting to learn everything I can from the experience and use it to be the mom I never thought I’d be. My role as Mom has taken on a lot of new dimension over the last little while and I'm anticipating even more of that in the future. Which is a good thing. People often say they learn a lot from their children, I have certainly learned a lot from raising them and I anticipate many more lessons ahead.

What's in a Name: Daisy

By Josi 

          One of the fun things about being a fiction writer, and creating characters, is that you get to name them. I have four kids, and I lost every name-decision my husband and I had with them. Lost might be the wrong word, since I like all their names, but they were names my husband and I agreed on, not necessarily either of our favorites. 

           When I was expecting my fourth child—also my last—I had two favorite names: Esther and Daisy. My husband made a face at both of them. He thought Esther sounded old and Daisy sounded air-headed. I was, of course, offended, then he said his name of choice was Charlemagne and I knew he’d lost it (no offense to any Esthers, Daisys, or Charlemagnes out there.) My next suggestion was Keeley, but Keeley Kilpack had a weird ring to it. We both liked Kylee, however, and so that became our baby’s name. It’s a perfect name for her and neither of us cringe when we say it, so it was a good choice.

            When Annette, Heather, Julie and I were discussing characters for this series, I threw out the idea of Daisy and then braced myself for compaints—since my husband hadn’t liked it—but to my surprise they were all good with it. So, her name was Daisy and she's not an air-head. Originally Daisy's character was suffering from an eating disorder, but as I further developed her that didn’t stick very well. I kept playing with ideas and then came up with the idea of her being in her forties, excited for her last daughter to leave home, feeling like everything was going as planned, and then facing an unplanned pregnancy. THAT story idea took off for me and the story unfolded rather quickly from that point forward.

           AND, I got to use Daisy in a book. Maybe one day I'll use Esther too (though Heather Moore is beating me to that point right now as she writes the story of Esther). I will likely not use Charlemagne, however. :-)

How it all Started . . .

By Josi 

            One of my least favorite questions to be asked is “What is your favorite book?” I have many favorites, but it’s difficult to rank them as my very favorite, or my fourth favorite, and as I get older, books that were once lower on the list have risen in the ranks as my understanding of them have changed. There are a few books, however, that never seem to fall far down the list. One of those books is Twelve Sisters by Leslie Beaton Hedley. I checked it out from the library many years ago and liked it so much that I bought my own copy, which I somehow lost (probably because I loaned it out) and then I bought another copy which I don’t plan to loan out ever again since it’s now out of print. I don’t know how well the book sold when it was in print, I don’t know how many other people read it, but—not to put too heavy a spin on it—it changed my life. For a few reasons.

            The book is about twelve women who live in the same LDS ward. They cover the spectrum of college student to a woman, literally, in her final hours. Each chapter is dedicated to one of these women and involves a sacrament meeting. In “Her” chapter, the woman “sees” the other women, but we get to see her in a way that no one else in that room ever will. We see their struggles, their heartbreaks, their purpose, their goals. We share in their frustrations, we understand why do they do the things they do.

In the next chapter, we see another woman, often passing judgment on someone else we just “met” a chapter or two earlier. I had never read anything like it—I still haven’t—and when I finished the book I felt as though my world had opened up a little wider. That woman I’m critical in my mind for being too perfect, or too sloppy, or too lazy, or too heavy, has a story that I don’t know and yet I think I DO know. Over and over again we pass judgment on one another and are somehow confident of that perspective even though that person we’ve judged is essentially a stranger to us. It’s so easy to do, it comes naturally for some of us to critique and measure everyone we meet. Twelve sisters, however, showed just how much truth is missed when we do this to one another, and how we can compound the hard road someone is traveling by being so flippant with our determinations.

            After reading that book—about fifteen years ago—I had the seed of an idea form in my brain—someday I want to write a book like that. In the years that followed, I would think about it now and then but I couldn’t figure out how to write it without basically copying what Hedley had done in Twelve Sisters. I didn’t want to re-write that book, I wanted one of my own, but couldn’t find the right way to do it different, and yet as good; as powerful. Then, in 2009, Julie Wright and I went on a book tour. We spent hours and hours and hours talking about pretty much everything. At some point, I started telling her about my idea but as I said the words, a light went on in the closet where the idea had been gathering dust for years. What if the reason I couldn’t figure out how to write it was because I wasn’t supposed to? As the words tumbled out, Julie helped me process them and within a short time the idea for Newport Ladies’ Book Club was born. We wouldn’t write one book, we’d write four books by four authors but with the same goal I felt Twelve Sisters had achieved—showing how we misinterpret other people, and just how much of an impact we can have on them.

            After bringing Annette Lyon and Heather Moore up to speed, we all set out to do something we’d never seen done before—a parallel novel series about four different women who meet up in a book club. The goal was to show these women’s lives in detail, while the other members of this book club only saw bits and pieces.

            I’ll write more about the process we went through in a future post, but hope that this helps the readers understand where the idea came from and why we wrote it the way we did. Our hope is that reading one book is great, but reading a second, third, or fourth then enriches the overall experience, helping us to “see” what we can’t see in just one novel from one Point of View. We hope you love it as much as we do.

The Series at a Glance: Infographic!

Below is a great infographic created by Kelly, the great PR gal at Covenant, that sums up the series and shows the first two covers the are finalized, as well as the awesome new pictures we got taken together.

Click to "bigg-ify."

We're looking forward to getting the other two covers posted soon!